PHPmailer is not working on live server using gmail smtp with cakePHP 3

Question

I use cakePHP 3, when I moved my app to server, it stopped sending emails, I am using gmail smtp server. I tried with SSL connect to smtp.gmail.com on port 465, still not working. Also variable $mail->SMTPDebug = on; is making some troubles.

My send function is this:

  public function send($to, $subject, $message) {
    $sender = "me@me.com"; // this will be overwritten by GMail

    $header = "X-Mailer: PHP/".phpversion() . "Return-Path: $sender";
    $header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
    $header .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8\r\n";

    $mail = new \PHPMailer();

    $mail->IsSMTP();
    $mail->Host = "aspmx.l.google.com";
    $mail->SMTPAuth = true;
    $mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl";
    $mail->Port = 25;
    $mail->SMTPDebug  = on; // turn it off in production
    $mail->Username   = "........";
    $mail->Password   = "........";

    $mail->From = $sender;
    $mail->FromName = "From Me";

    $mail->AddAddress($to);

    $mail->IsHTML(true);
    $mail->CreateHeader($header);

    $mail->Subject = $subject;
    $mail->Body    = nl2br($message);
    $mail->AltBody = nl2br($message);

    // return an array with two keys: error & message
    if(!$mail->Send()) {
        return array('error' => true, 'message' => 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo);
    } else {
        return array('error' => false, 'message' =>  "Message sent!");
    }
}
}

my error is this:

Use of undefined constant on - assumed 'on' [APP/Controller/Component/EmailComponent.php, line 30]

Undefined variable: errno [ROOT/vendor/phpmailer/class.smtp.php, line 182]

Undefined variable: errstr [ROOT/vendor/phpmailer/class.smtp.php, line 183]

Is is possible that webhosting on which I have page is blocking it?

Thank you

Answer 1

Edit your lines like below:

$mail->Host = "smtp.gmail.com";
$mail->Port = 587;

It should work now.

Answer 2

In line $mail->SMTPDebug = on; // turn it off in production $mail->SMTPDebug = on; // turn it off in production

on must be in quotes: 'on'

UPDATE:

In the class.phpmailer.php (from line nr. 315) there is description of the SMTPDebug values: it is integer from 0 to 4.

 // 0 - No output
 // 1 - Commands
 // 2 - Data and commands
 // 3 - As 2 plus connection status
 // 4 - Low-level data output

Answer 3

There's some misunderstanding of basic PHP syntax happening here. Have you tried reading the manual ?

In this case, on (as well as being just plain invalid PHP) is not a valid value for SMTPDebug , even if you make it a string. Try setting it to 2 , as the docs suggest .

Your code is something of a mess - you're trying to break bits of PHPMailer (don't try to set headers yourself like that, let PHPMailer do it properly); you've based your code on an obsolete example, and are using an old version of PHPMailer; You're talking to the wrong address to send out through gmail - it should be smtp.gmail.com ; You're trying to use SSL on a non-SSL port; You're putting HTML tags into the plain text version.

There's just too much wrong here to be worth fixing, so I suggest you start again with a clean, working example , and update to the latest PHPMailer .

As far as problems connecting to gmail go, this is also very well covered by the troubleshooting guide and by many other questions on SO.